Ministry of Justice consultation · CP 1581 · not yet law

A Fairer End to Relationships: what the cohabitation reform consultation actually proposes

This page covers what the consultation proposes, what is still an open question rather than a decision, what it deliberately leaves out, and what happens next. It does not restate today's intestacy rules — that page already exists, and is linked throughout.

One paper, published by one department, bundles three separate reforms together. “A fairer end to relationships” — command paper CP 1581 (read the full PDF) — was published by the Ministry of Justice on 5 June 2026 and presented to Parliament by the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Rt Hon David Lammy MP, by Command of His Majesty.

It asked for views between 5 June and 14 August 2026, and is now closed. Three reforms sit inside one document:

Why one paper covers all three: the government's own framing is that cohabiting couples currently fall through the same gap whether the relationship ends by separation or by death — no marriage, no automatic legal recognition, either way.

Building on the Law Commission's 2007 report “Cohabitation: The Financial Consequences of Relationship Breakdown” and its 2011 report “Intestacy and Family Provision Claims on Death”, the paper treats both gaps as one policy problem.

This page follows the same split the consultation itself uses — separation, then death — because they are genuinely different legal proposals with different tests and different timelines, not one reform under two names.

The government's proposal for separating cohabitants is a needs-based scheme, deliberately narrower than divorce. Courts would start from the position that each person keeps what they legally own, and depart from that only to meet defined needs — narrower than the needs considered on divorce, and excluding discretionary or luxury needs.

The stated aim is a scheme cohabitants can opt out of, with real safeguards, rather than one imposed on every couple who lives together.

What a claim could actually achieve is narrower than a divorce settlement. Remedies would be similar in type to those available on divorce, with a strong emphasis on a clean break.

Maintenance would be limited to exceptional, time-bound circumstances — such as long-term ill health — not the open-ended “joint lives” orders that can arise on divorce. A child's welfare would be the court's first consideration wherever resources are limited.

Couples could opt out — but not out of the safeguards. The proposed opt-out mechanism requires independent legal advice for both partners, and cannot be used to waive the right to financial disclosure or to legal advice itself.

It also could not block a child maintenance application through the Child Maintenance Service, or a claim under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989 — the scheme is opt-out for the adults' own claims, not for a child's.

This is the part that changes what happens if a partner dies without a will, and it is the least settled part of the whole paper. The government says it is “minded to adopt” a model where a qualifying cohabitant inherits under the intestacy rules in the same way as a spouse or civil partner — the same amount, the same place in the statutory order — having agreed with the Law Commission that a more limited, partial entitlement would be harder to design, harder to apply, and more likely to generate disputes.

But whether qualifying cohabitants get these rights at all — not only who qualifies — is still an open question, not a decision: see Question 43 below.

The definition test proposed for death is deliberately different from the one proposed for separation. For intestacy, the government's preferred test is “marriage-equivalence” — living together as if you were spouses or civil partners, mirroring the concepts already tested through decades of s.1 IPFDA 1975 case law. For separation, by contrast, the broader “enduring family relationship” test in §II applies.

The government's own reasoning is that intestacy reallocates assets away from a deceased's wider family — including children from earlier relationships — so it wants the settled certainty of an existing legal test, where separation calls for more flexibility.

Several law-firm summaries published after the consultation opened state the 5-year/2-year figures as if they were the government's settled proposal. Reading the document itself, they are consultation options — Questions 46 and 47 — not a decision. This page keeps that distinction because it is the difference between reporting what the government has decided and reporting what it is still asking the public.

Two of the biggest practical consequences of a partner's death sit entirely outside this paper, by its own admission. The consultation document states plainly that it “does not address matters that sit with other government departments, such as inheritance tax or pension entitlements.” That single sentence has real consequences for what this reform would and would not change.

The practical takeaway is unchanged whether or not this reform passes: a pension nomination and a life-insurance trust or named beneficiary already sit outside the estate and outside the intestacy rules altogether. Valoren's unmarried partner, no will page sets out exactly what still passes to a surviving partner today, with or without this reform.

An existing statute, not part of this consultation

Scotland is worth reading against this consultation for one reason: it shows a working cohabitant-inheritance scheme already exists in the UK, and England's proposed reform would actually go further than it. s.29 FLSA 2006 — section 29 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 — lets a surviving cohabitant apply to the Sheriff Court or the Court of Session for a discretionary award of financial provision from an intestate estate. This is Valoren's own comparison, sourced independently: the MoJ consultation cites Scotland twice, but both citations concern the separation definition in §II, not this death provision.

s.29 FLSA 2006 only applies where the deceased died domiciled in Scotland — it has no bearing on an estate where the deceased was domiciled in England, Wales or elsewhere, whatever the couple's own nationality or where they happened to live together. Confirm the current position with a Scottish solicitor before relying on either figure.

Northern Ireland is not covered anywhere on this page, and nothing above should be read across to it. Valoren's Scottish page covers the household side of the same question.

There is no published timetable, and the honest answer is that this could take years. The consultation's own “Next steps” section says only that responses “will inform the development of legislation better to protect couples and their children” and that “any legislation will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.”

No draft bill exists, no government response has been published as of 30 August 2026 — sixteen days after the consultation closed — and GOV.UK's own tracking page still reads “we are analysing your feedback.”

The closest comparator is the Law Commission's own “Intestacy and Family Provision Claims on Death” report this consultation builds on: published in December 2011, it took until the Inheritance and Trustees' Powers Act 2014 received Royal Assent in May 2014 — roughly two and a half years — for that earlier reform to reach the statute book.

Nothing here suggests this one will be faster, and this page won't invent a date the source doesn't give.

None of that changes what protects you today. A will is the only instrument that puts a cohabiting partner into the estate right now, regardless of how long you've lived together or whether you have children together — and it will still matter after any reform passes, since the proposed intestacy rights would only ever be a fallback for couples who never got round to making one.

The wills door sets out what Valoren does here, and what it costs.

If the question is what today's law does to a cohabiting partner right now, the fuller page on that covers it end to end, including what already passes outside the estate — a joint account, a property held as joint tenants, a pension nomination — regardless of any reform.

Checked directly against the Ministry of Justice's own consultation document and GOV.UK on 30 August 2026. This is a live, unresolved consultation — figures marked as open questions here may be decided differently, or not at all, once a government response is published. This page is information about a policy proposal, not advice on your own situation.

Whichever way this consultation lands, it does not help anyone today.

The reform, if it becomes law, is years away and its final shape is still being decided. The gap it would close is open right now, for every cohabiting couple in England and Wales, and there is already one document that closes it.